The Stage

The Lightning Field

Published Thursday 22 November 2007 at 17:15 by Barbara Lewis

Thunderbolts are hardly original as a symbol of violent love, but as symbols of intense gay feeling they have fresh potency.

The romance deepens as we find ourselves witnessing a gay marriage proposal in the setting of sculptor Walter De Maria’s cult installation The Lightning Field - a collection of 400 steel poles in New Mexico.

Whether heterosexual cliches and institutions are worth replicating is a moot point, especially through the eyes of divorced parents who want their children to chart a different path, and David Ozanich’s short, sharp play leaves us pondering.

Jared Coseglia’s deft direction draws out rich humour as the ageing, but mostly tolerant parents stumble across their offspring in various positions amid the poles as part of a highly-charged debate on relationships homosexual or otherwise.

The play’s one woman is Bekka Lindstrom as Lori, the very feminine mother of Andy, played by Rightor Doyle, young, vulnerable and a self-hating masochist - “because aren’t all gays?”, he asks, to audience laughter.

This tender pairing is offset by the tougher love of father Gerrit (Rick Zahn) and his son Sam (H Ryan Clark), with whom Andy is slavishly in love.

The danger is they are repeating their parents’ cycles, but in the rare instances when lightning strikes twice, it’s hard not to brave the risk.